Evan Tanner on Fighting Career: "I'm Not Done"

http://mmajunkie.comEvan Tanner suffered a second-round knockout loss to Yushin Okami at this past weekend’s UFC 82 event, failing in his comeback attempt after a two-year layoff from the sport.

While it was a loss in one sense, it was unimaginable and life-affirming success in another. He lost the little fight, but Tanner feels he won the big one.

The 37-year-old today posted a blog entry on his official website, and in it, Tanner opened up about years of addiction and his decision to make a life-saving change. Undeterred by a loss to Okami and fueled by his sobriety, Tanner has confirmed that his fighting career is very much alive and that he remains committed to reclaiming the middleweight title.

Before this past weekend’s return to the organization, Tanner signed a four-fight deal with the UFC. However, despite being essentially broke, he forewent corporate sponsorships and instead relied almost solely on the fans. He developed a system in which average Joes could sponsor him, getting gear, autographs and other items in return. He dubbed it “Team Tanner” and emblazoned the logo across his fight-night T-shirt.

Having the fans play such a big part in the fight made the loss that much tougher.

“I am extremely disappointed in the defeat, embarrassed beyond belief,” he today wrote on evantanner.net. “I feel so bad to have disappointed so many people. I feel I embarrassed my coach, my school, the Team Tanner members, and everyone who believed in me and stood by me. I am deeply hurt that I couldn’t do better for them.”

However, that challenge was nothing compared to the one he waged just months earlier. He had spent countless years battling alcohol addiction but set a date and quit cold turkey to train for a return at UFC 82.

“It is said that alcohol is one of the worst addictions, and the withdrawals can be more intense than any other,” Tanner wrote. “It is said that it is so intense that many die during the detox period. I had moments when I first quit that my chest and arm would start cramping and my heart would pound strangely. I had made the decision to stop drinking (and) was going to stand by it. I thought that if I died while trying, then so be it, but I was done drinking.”

Tanner wrote about just how bad the addiction had gotten. He drank every hour he was awake. He quit eating and became malnourished. His teeth began to loosen, and his body began to bloat and swell from the damage.

He had grown accustomed to the failure and self-loathing. So, facing the disappointment of a loss to Tanner in front of millions of people on Saturday, he knew things were about to get really difficult.

“I had just stepped out of the Octagon where I had stood face to face with one of the top fighters in the world, but it was there, in the dressing room behind the scenes after the fight that night, that I waged my greatest battle,” Tanner wrote. “It would have been so easy to have picked up the bottle again in that moment, to have made the decision to go back to it.

“That moment, in the silence of the dressing room, faced with crushing disappointment, numbing embarrassment, and that heavy sadness, I faced the old demons. I felt so low, as if everything had been lost. I wanted to drink. I faced those old demons again, and I beat them down. I won the battle, and I won the war.”

Having gone through all that, climbing back into the cage doesn’t sound like much of a challenge after all.

“I’m solid,” Tanner wrote. “I’m back into full-time training this week. The fight was a setback, but I’m not done. There’s still a belt to win.”

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